School Board meeting-June 12, 2025

001June 12th meeting of the Almar County School Board is now in session. Um, do we have a motion? Mr. Paige, could you hold the mic? I move that the school board of alone county Virginia go into a closed meeting as authorized by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act section 2-23711A Dakota Virginia under subsection one for the discussion consideration or interviews of prospective candidates for employment in the assignment appointment promotion performance um demotion salaries disciplining or resignation of specific public offices appointees or employees of any public body. The purpose of this item is to discuss administrative appointments for the 202526 school year. A recent personnel issue and the selection of student representatives to the school board for the upcoming school year. Subsection 8 for consultation with legal counsel employed or retained by the school board regarding

002specific legal matters requiring the provision of legal advice by such council. The purpose of this item is for school division council to update the school board on the progress of contract negotiations with the mile education association. Do we have a second? Second. Motion made by Mr. Page, seconded by Miss Lee. Uh Christine, can you please call the vote? Miss Lee? Yes. Mr. Page? Yes. Miss Oscorn? Yes, Miss Prior. Yes, Motion passes. We're in close session. And we're in 241. 24. Good evening. Uh, this meeting of the of June 12th meeting of the Alawal County School Board is back in session after a closed meeting. Do we have a motion? We do, Cherry Cuff. I move that the board certify by recorded vote that to the best of each board member's knowledge only public business matters

003lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion authorized the closed meeting were heard, discussed or considered in the closed meeting. Second motion. Motion made by Miss Lee, seconded by Mr. Page. Miss Thompson, can you please call the vote? Mr. Page, yes. Miss Lee, yes. Dr. Berlin. Yes. Miss Osborne. Yes. Miss Prior is absent. Miss Prior, yes. Yes. With that, uh, do we have any motions coming out of the closed meeting? I have at least one. I move that we appoint students A, student A, student B, student C, student D, and student E as student reps and alternate for the 2526 school year. Do we have a second? I second. Motion made by Miss Lee, seconded by Dr. Berlin. Uh I think we can all

004in favor of this. I opposed. Motion passes. And then I I do have another one. I move that we approve the the appointment for the 2526 school year of the list of school administrators that school board reviewed in close session. Second. Motion made by Miss Lee, seconded by Mr. Page. All in favor? I opposed. Motion passes. Uh with that, let us uh identify ourselves so anyone uh who's listening can listen uh knows who we are. Miss Schmidt, Roslin Schmidt, chief operating officer. Daffany Kaiser, assistant superintendent. Judy Leroy Bana District and Motion Hog. Graham Paige Miller District. Rebecca Berlin Whiteall district. Kday Jackwit District. Ellen Osborne, Scottville School District. Leslie Prior, Rio District. Claire Kaiser, assistant superintendent for organizational development. Matthew Hall, superintendent. Josiah Black, school division council. Chandra Hayes, assistant superintendent of instruction. Christine Thompson,

005Clark. I don't know if the officers would like to identify themselves. Daryl Mish. Thank you. Kaden Per, thank you for being here tonight. Uh, now let us stand for the pledge of allegiance of America to the repsible. And now a moment of silence. The next item is approval of the agenda. I move we approve tonight's agenda. Second. Motion made by Miss Osborne, seconded by Miss Lee. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion passes. Uh, next are announcements by school board or superintendent business. Miss Prior, do you have something? I do. Whereas Claire Kaiser joined Along County Public Schools on August 2nd, 2004 as an assistant principal at Henley Middle School, launching a career marked by integrity, innovation, impact. And whereas her leadership and commitment to student success led to her appointment as principal of Holly

006Elementary School on July 1st, 2007, where she cultivated a school culture grounded in equity, joy, and high expectations. And whereas Claire was promoted to director of educator quality and human resources on July 1st, 2012 where she designed and implemented divisionwide initiatives to elevate the teaching profession, recruit and retain outstanding educators and advance professional learning. And whereas on July 1st, 2018, Clare was appointed assistant superintendent of organizational human resources and professional development in division support where she oversaw critical human capital strategy, leadership development, and organizational change across the school division. And whereas Claire's leadership has been defined by a deep respect, a deep respect for people, a relentless pursuit of excellence, and a steady hand during times of uncertainty. And whereas she has mentored and inspired countless educators and leaders, always guided by the belief that

007school communities thrive when adults grow, connect, and lead with purpose. Now, therefore, it resolved that the Alma County School Board hereby expresses its deep appreciation and admiration for Clare Kaiser's exceptional service, strategic leadership, and unwavering commitment to the students, families, and staff of Almar County Public Schools. And be it further resolved that the school board wishes Clare a retirement filled with good health, enriching travels, vigorous games of pickle ball, and shares time with loved ones. And witness whereof the Almont County School Board hereby adoption approves this resolution on June 12th, 2025. [Applause] Thank you. I don't know if you want to say anything about your sojourn here with ACBS. Speech speech. Speech. I just want to say that I am um humbled and honored and thank you for the very kind words and um it

008truly has been a privilege to serve at the board and um I thank you for the opportunity. Thank you. You mind Dr. Aut Dr. AOP? I just want to also on a personal note uh particularly uh the sixth whereas I would definitely count myself self in that among the people that Dr. Kaiser has mentored and inspired and really worked with over the years. Um, I've certainly known and worked with many staff for as long as I've worked with Claire because but she and I both started here uh in Almar at the same time as school level administrators among a group of approximately maybe 15 others at that time 21 years ago and we're the only ones that are that are still here from that group. Um, I I have a professional bond with Claire that

009I think that few people get to experience in a career. And I'm sure that I benefited mostly from it much more than you did. And I'm full of gratitude to have uh had Claire in my life all these years, particularly the last many that we worked together in the central office. I'm going to miss her greatly and I'm just joining with everyone else and really thanking you for all you've done for the school system and for the kids. Thank you. Thank you again. [Applause] The next item on the agenda is spotlight on education. Uh Miss Thompson, do we have anything tonight? We had to cancel the spotlight. Okay. So, with that, we move on to public comment and Miss Osborne will read the rules. Um, we have no public comment for the regular public comment.

010Okay. So, we will wait to read the rules until we get to the section on public hearing, public hearing. Okay. Thank you. Uh, the next item then on our agenda is approval of the consent agenda. Do we have a motion? I move that we uh approve the consent agenda. Second. Motion made by Mr. page seconded by Miss Lee. All those in favor of approving the consent agenda say I. I. Opposed. Motion passes. Uh the next item is school board compensation. Uh and we have Mr. Reading from human resources to talk to us about this. All right. Good evening, schoolboard members and members of the cabinet. Um, I'm Dan Reading from human resources, and I'm here with you this evening to talk about schoolboard compensation. This connects to our strategic plan, specifically equitative and transformative resources.

011Typically, when I'm talking about compensation and focusing on this goal, we're talking about staff salaries. However, schoolboard compensation is also a part of that. We want members of the community to be attracted to this work and over time, the work of being a board member has changed significantly as our community has become more engaged. Expectations of responsiveness to constituent concerns and attendance at school and community events continue continue to rise. So, we want to be sure that schoolboard compensation matches the expectations of the community for the work that's being done. The basis of the determination of schoolboard salary is embedded both in schoolboard policy and in the Virginia Administrative Code. both provide a pathway towards how schoolboard compensation is determined and can be changed over time. Within the code of Virginia, there are two different

012methodologies. In one of them, in order to have an automatic salary increase, the school board, I'm sorry, an annual salary increase or the ability to increase regularly. The school board has to set a salary in line with the population of the community. Specifically, the county population has to fall within one of these buckets, and the school board may set a salary with the corresponding range. Note that the chair is eligible to receive an additional sum up to $1,800 recognizing the differentiated duties of the chair. The history over the past few years of schoolboard salary is listed on this slide. The current salary is $7,915 per year. That's paid out in bi-weekly installments of $3442. You can see that in 2022 when all staff received two uh increases, one midyear and one at the end of

013the or the beginning of the next fiscal year, the school board received a 10.2% increase. Prior to that, the board received an increase of 2.3% in 2019 and prior to that in 2017, a 2% increase. Both of those in line with the increase that the board adopted for employees in their budget. When we talk about compensation for our employees, we go back to our comparative market. Back in 2022, as part of our divisionwide compensation study, the board adopted 15 school divisions that we will compare ourselves to. Those 15 divisions were chosen based on the similarities of the population of that community in terms of educational attainment within that community. um proximity to major colleges and universities and uh in different communities, the diversity and size of the student population. We received responses from 13 of

014the 15 comparative divisions. Uh when we surveyed uh we did not get a response from either Augusta or Rockingham, but you can see the range of salaries for schoolboard members and we included the last known adjustment if they share that information with us. Uh we've also put the student population that that schoolboard serves. You can see it's a pretty wide range within that data. Uh, we note that Hanover County, their last change was in 2006. The board did attempt to increase salaries in 2023, but that attempt failed. Charlottesville City recently voted to increase schoolboard member salaries from the current 8,500 to be $10,000 effective January 1st. I'll just pause here if you want to take a look at this data. We can come back to that in a moment. So our market compensation philosophy that

015we adopted, we strive to provide compensation that is at the 60th percentile. When we rank those 15 divisions, highest to lowest, we want to be at the 60th percentile. Not at the not at the middle average, but above that. The average schoolboard salary for the 13 divisions that responded is $14,68 and the 60th percentile would be $15,600. I mentioned earlier there are two options that the board may use should they wish to adjust their compensation. Uh and per the different code sections, they can set a new salary and they must vote prior to July 1 annually if they wish to increase that salary effective July 1 of the next year. In option two, they can set that salary per that chart we showed earlier not to exceed 13,000 with the additional $1,800 for the chair

016and then enact annual adjustments that may not exceed 5% after a public hearing. Such a vote must take place between May 1st and June 30th during the year. That's a lot of information, but with that, uh, we're open for questions and discussion. Thanks for pulling that info, Dan. So, it looks like for both, um, options, there would need to still be an annual vote there. There would still need to be an annual vote. Yes. Well, ex if I may, um, if you if you select option two, you can adopt this year an automatic inflation increase for each successive year of up to 5%. Oh, I see. Doesn't have to be 5%. It could be 2%, 4%, anything in between. Um but option one under which you can exceed the $13,000 cap if you want that

017would require a new vote each year. Okay. The other clarification that I wanted to make is that um under section 1414.3 um the board is allowed to also uh pay an additional stipen to the vice chair of $1,200 if that's of interest. And finally, um Dr. Hayes uh alerted me as we came in this evening that Hanover actually just voted two days ago to double their salary. So next year their school board members will receive 17,400 and change. So the average is actually a little higher than what we show in our presentation. It's late breaking news. It came out after I had to spit the presentation. Sorry. Um Mr. black. Just to clarify, option two, uh, if we set it at that, we could peg it to the increases to what the staff gets provided.

018It did not exceed whatever percent 5%. Yes, sure. If you could. So, that that could be we would if they got a 2% we'd get a 2% up to five. Correct. As long as it's capped at 5%. Okay. And under option one, there's no potential for an additional stipen for the chair or vice chair. No, actually you can pay whatever additional statement you want to the chair and vice chair under option one. Okay. The financial this is money that comes directly from the school that the state doesn't give us any money for this. Is that true or I don't know the answer to that. I mean it's my understanding that this is all out of operational funding. Yeah. And I would just say that, you know, on a percentage of total budget basis, we're talking

019about a very very small percentage. Seven members times your current salaries is less than $100,000. I mean, I I'll just go ahead and start discussion. I feel like as someone who has served both as a member and as a vice chair and as the chair, I have always felt like it's so important to us to pay people for their work except us. And I think that I I can understand that, but I also think that it would be very hard for someone who didn't have the amount of privilege that I have to serve in a role like this. And I think that that really diminishes our power um to truly represent our constituents. So I am for whatever decision um I'm for being able to attract people who might not be able to put this

020time toward this if not for that reason. I would just say although no one does this job for the money, I certainly agree with Miss Lee that for some people there are some financial challenges to taking the time to participate. I think the comparative data is is pretty powerful and um and And I guess we will make a decision after we get public the public hearing. But do we have any more questions for Mr. Reading or any more comments? I guess I'm just I'm curious about members of the board if one or two are more attractive. I would lean toward two even though it's less money than the ceiling because we could craft it so it would be automatic with uh staff increases up to a ceiling of 5% and I would uh additional stipen

021for chair and we have a new chair in January and this wouldn't go into effect until January. Um I thought it was July one. I think it's January, isn't it? any any change that you adopt tonight cannot be effective until January 1st. Right. So it would be the it would be the next round. And I also I've served both as chair and vice chair and the vice chair gets almost nothing. I mean I think the the the payment for the vice chair who has to attend a lot of meet extra meetings also is um only if I am stricken ill does and the s and the the vice chair has to wield the gavl she gets an extra she gets $35. So, I think that's happened once and so I I would also uh want

022to increase that to reflect the amount of additional time. I I think a lot of members of the community think we just show up these twice a month and this is the tip of the iceberg of what we do. I don't have a strong opinion for either option one or option two, but it occurs to me that it might be worth it to deliberately think about this every year, which option one would force us to do. Yeah, that's would you go back to the comparison data just for just just because that handover because that that handover was an outlier. They were the All right. And for anyone who is curious why we're doing it at this meeting under I've and Mr. Black can correct me when if I veer off. uh these decisions have to

023be made between May and the end of June on a year where at least two members of the school board are running for election or there's two people running for school board seats. So it's not every year that this can be changed and this is the first one since we started talking about this two or three years ago where the stars aligned. Yes, that's correct. And one further nuance is that code just requires that you adopt a change under method one by an affirmative vote in an open meeting. Our schoolboard policy currently says that we'll also go through the exercise of having a public hearing, invite public commenters, do what we're doing now. We don't have to have the public hearings. We could decide to change schoolboard policy so that it can be done just

024by motion and vote. Are we finished with our conversation here? We can go straight to the public hearing. Miss, sounds good. Thank you, Mr. Daddy. Okay. I have public comment guidelines for this. We welcome public input at our schoolboard meetings. To sign up to speak during the public comment period, you can do so in several ways. Sign up online. Zup is available from 9:00 a.m. on the Monday of the meeting week until 2 pm on the meeting day. By phone, call the school board clerk's office to sign up. In person, you can sign up. The papers will be out there until the public comment period. Please note that public comment is not received at special board meetings unless specified on the agenda. Each speaker will have three minutes to speak. The maximum number of people

025or groups that may speak at a meeting is 20. Uh speaker should state your name, address voting district or voting district. We don't need to know both. Uh address comments to the school board, limit comments to schoolboard governance or school division operations, and provide written statements and supporting material to the clerk if you would like. And we'll be using a timer. Once the time is up, um you're done. Uh tonight we have two speakers, Mary McIntyre and Heidi Gilman Bennett. Is the giant timer? Oh, you know what? Because everything is out. You We just I'll just be just beating Mary. I'll be um I'm Mary McIntyre. I live in the Rio district. I'm a mother of two ACPS students and I'm the president of the Almoral Education Association. But tonight I'm speaking to you as

026an individual. Um, first I want to point out how wonderful it must be to get to decide your own compensation. Um, I have never had that privilege, but I think you you should have saved your discussion. [Laughter] Are we good? Okay. Okay. I think you should have saved your discussion until after the public hearing because by having your discussion already, the message is that you don't really care what we have to say, whether you meant it that way or not. Um, and I feel conflicted about this issue because I know that in order to get more people um who have to work for a living, who aren't wealthy or retired to be able to run and serve in public office, it has to pay enough to make it worth their time. I logically know that.

027But that doesn't mean that there are not serious concerns both budgetary and morally with what you're considering tonight. While I of all people do not begrudge people the right to be paid fairly for their work, there was a decent amount of relevant information that could have been provided in the slides about this topic and it was not included. For example, how many hours do schoolboard members spend on schoolboard duties? How many school visits do schoolboard members normally complete? Do our board members respond to every email from people in their district? Do board members still get paid even when they miss board meetings? When we, the ACPS staff, come and beg you for raises, we have to justify why we deserve them, often explaining how many hours we work above and beyond what is expected, how

028many additional duties have been added to our workloads, etc. It would be really helpful for you all to justify the raise you're requesting to the taxpayers of Marl County and to your own employees, not simply comparing yourselves to what other people are getting paid. Now, I have no idea what amount or percent of a raise you plan to give yourselves tonight, but I want you to seriously think about how it will look and feel to your staff in a year where we face budget cuts so severe that FTEEs were cut, people lost their jobs, and beloved programs were ended because of costs. If you choose to raise your salaries to the maximum allowable, you will be giving yourselves approximately a 64% raise if my math is correct compared to my 3%. I'm not saying you

029don't deserve a reasonable raise. But this is not the year to give yourselves such a large raise. I believe you should consider giving yourselves a smaller, more modest raise and come back when our budget situation is dramatically different to raise your own salaries so dramatically. It will be more in line with the experience of your own hardworking employees and it will not put additional pressure on a budget that is already extremely tight. Thank you. Um hello Heidi Gilman Bennett Samuel Miller district uh also chair of family council but tonight I'm speaking as a private citizen. Um, having spent many hours working to recruit school board candidates for many of your seats, I am actually in support of increased compensation. I would like to see Alamar County move toward a more professional school board that is

030actively working to achieve its goals. It takes significant time to do the job well. Not only to show up to these meetings, but also to actively prepare for the meetings, show up for the photo opportunities, but more importantly to meet with ACPS leaders and your counterpart counterparts on the board of supervisors, as well as respond to emails and calls and meet with opinionated members of the public like me. I'd like to see a board that reflects the diversity of our community. Committing to all the time required to do it well with so little pay is a real barrier. I've tried to recruit some amazing potential candidates who just couldn't make it work because of the pay involved and the need to pay bills and the need for health care. These are really strong considerations for

031members of our community. However, I must express concern that I've heard from other community members that raising compensation now during a budget crunch is a bad look. I also need to share community skepticism that increased salary may not actually produce better outcomes for currently seated board members. Um, we would like to see we being members of the community would like to see a school board that is more actively engaging with constituents and accountable to the public such as town halls, the ability to sign up for emails when there's a school board agenda posted, accurate calendar of schoolboard advisory meetings, attachments on agendas that we can review and share ahead of time, those types of basic things. My personal preference is actually to put a larger salary increase into effect based on the number of hours

032actually required to do the work, but to have this take effect following a public vote when each of your seats are up for renewal. Um, my personal opinions. Um, but thank you for all that you do. I know it's a tough job. Thank you. and that we would comment on the issue of schoolboard compensation. Thank you, Miss Osborne. The next, excuse me, the next item on the agenda is uh item 8.3, employment engagement, and we have Miss Jay Carter Shifflin here tonight. Sorry. Good evening. Um, thank you schoolboard members, cabinet, superintendent house. Um, tonight I will be sharing with you just a brief overview of Gallup engagement survey data. And as we think about our mission, vision, values, and goals, our strategic plan elaborates on what we aspire to achieve around equitable, transformative resources. This

033is elaborated in goal three. Um, and one of those resources is the Gallup engagement survey. Excuse me, can you just pull your mic down a little bit? Thank you. Thank you. How about now? Perfect. Okay. So, looking at focusing on goal three, the equitable transformative resources, the Gallup survey is the national norm tool. Um, and it provides the Slooh division with valuable employee feedback through a rating scale that gives us results indicating levels of satisfaction in regards to national results. This helps the ACPS division recognize the experiences and work environment within departments and school buildings and how employees perceive their success with the system structures and resources available to them. Then our state interview, a best practice that ACPS has successfully implemented for the past three years, allows staff members to expand on these survey

034results by offering deep insights into the frequency numbers from the rating scale. This is our fourth administration of Gallup engagement survey and it has allowed us to one provide our leaders with datadriven insight to inform their decisions. It has added to our division goal of creating a culture of listening and acknowledging our staff. And this resource supports our strategic plan and district goals. Later on in this presentation, I'm going to share a little bit in depth about intentional partnerships with a couple of our schools and departments. In those partnerships, we analyzed Gallup engagement data with the goal of improving school department engagement and climate, targeting support where it was needed most and aiming to reduce staff turnover. All of these efforts went towards the division's ultimate goal of enhancing student achievement. So, this is our

035Gallup um engagement survey dashboard for the entire division. For the pre for this school year, we had 2,229 respondents to the survey. ACPS is in the 39th percentile, which is a 3% increase from last year. The trended mean also increased by 02. Last year's trended mean was 3.83 and this year it is 3.92. The two highest items in for the division are Q2. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right. In Q5, my supervisor or someone at work seems to care about me as a person. Gallup also identified a couple areas of opportunity for growth. Q4, in the last seven days, I've received recognition and praise for doing good work. In Q6, there is someone at work who encourages my development. I want to point out there are a few

036celebrations around ACPS's engagement index. When we look at the percentage of our engaged employees, it increased by 4%. It went from 38% the previous year to 42% this last year. The number the percentage of our employees not engaged decreased by 2%. It went from um 49% down to 47%. And our actively disengaged also decreased 2% going from 13% to 11%. Gallup shares that when organizations reach the 4:1 ratio, meaning there are four engaged employees for every one actively disengaged employee. This is the tipping point where engaged employees can offset the negative impact of disengaged employees. The ACPS engagement ratio has increased from 2.92:1 to 3.82:1. So again as we can see the increase in overall engagement and and the overall engagement mean over the course of four years. The ACPS engagement ratio increased by 0.9

037last year, which is our biggest increase. By the way, I want to point that out. Our Gallup collaborator wanted to point out with meaningful change being at 0.1, we're so close that he um acknowledges the 0.9 as meaningful change. Overall, there has been an increase of 0.19 since the beginning of implementation four years ago, and there has been a shift in the right direction each year since. Again, Gallup is ACPS's nationally normed survey tool used to indicate levels of engagement of our staff. In comparison to other education organizations participating in the Gallup database, ACPS is ranked at the 48th percentile range. And compared to others who are also in their fourth year of administration, ACPS is ranked at the 33rd percentile range. A few items to notice. First, there was an increase in each of

038the Q12 items. The bolded mean represents significant change for the organization. That bolded mean is in the second to last column in the chart. The overall satisfaction of respondents in this year's administration increased by.16. Our Gallup representative explains that this Q item usually relates to pay, commute, and logistical topics. The next two rows highlighted in yellow represent ACPS's two highest items with significant change in the mean. That is Q8, the mission and purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important. And Q3, at work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best. Lastly, even with all the positive increases, this data presents ACPS with a couple opportunities for growth. Those roles are highlighted in baby blue. Q6, there's someone at work who encourages my development. and Q4. In the past in

039the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work. These three additional items are questions that ACPS attached to our engagement survey. The NA for percentile rank indicates that there are not enough other organizations to compare that item to. Each of the three additional items as you can see show significant increase in mean from the previous administration of the survey. Lastly, as requested by our superintendent, we had a few intentional partnerships with um the goal of collaborating on Gallup engagement. Myself, Dr. Sarah Lynn, Jason Sears, Dan Reading, Jennifer Weller Kim, and Dave Bruce worked with the six identified schools and departments regularly to discuss their Gallup data and plans to increase engagement and climate. I want to take a moment to highlight a few partnerships that show tremendous growth, keeping in

040mind that Gallup says 2 is the most significant. According to um Gallup, that change of 0.2 two or more between survey periods represents that meaningful change for our organization. Our departments that have 100 or less respondents that was transportation, we can see they made more than um meaningful growth. Henley Middle School and our international and e programs. And thank you so much for allowing me to share this update with you all. Thank you for your time. I would love to open up for any questions or feedback that you would have at this moment. I'm just curious about next steps or or steps that have already happened um about how things are being shared with individual schools and individual departments and then what they would put into place uh as a followup. Yes, we've had the

041pleasure of collaborating with um Pat Mclofflin and the Department of Strategic Plan to set up folders that allowed all of our um managers to see their data right away. We didn't hold that. So, they were given access as well as Superintendent Hos um as soon as the survey ended. From there, we've also been collaborating around their school strategic plan and department strategic plans to make sure that they were supported with with their Gallup engagement goal. Um lastly, the collaboration with each indivi individual department or school leader um was given that opportunity. They're working on 90-day action plans right now and that goal is being um that's part the language was put in there as part of that and strategies um have been we're helping them with strategies to meet those goals. Also the division has

042um has created the opportunity for Dr. Sarah Lennon, myself to go to receive strengths, Gallup's Clifton strengths training that we also will come back and implement uh with our leaders in the division as well as professional learning and development around that to support with uh increasing our engagement goals and ultimately the student achievement goal. And and this was a key focus of our leadership retreat. We uh on the first day of the retreat, we had the our representative come from Gallup to give a overall presentation that was pretty similar to what Shay just shared. He he kind of uh he presented from the view of the overall district and then at the same time they were uh analyzing their data from their school. He walked us through a prof some pretty good professional development around

043how to look at the divisionwide data and then have discussions at the table with with the people we were at the table. Identify an area we wanted to work on. talk about the causes of it and then come up with a simple plan to do that. So we know that 70% of the way a person responds is in direct relationship to their manager the person that supervises them directly. And so we know that for us to be able to shift keep shifting not really shifting the data but shifting employee engagement so they feel good about coming to work and feel good about their day-to-day experiences which then translate into a great experience for kids and families is to work with the direct supervisors. So we will do the same plan this year where we look

044for uh hot spots in the school system um schools and departments where they seem to be standing still or maybe have gone uh maybe backtracked a little bit or aren't um aren't as high as we'd like them to be and we'll provide that kind of assistance because it really was effective and a lot of it was effective because of Shay Carter Shifflet and Sarah Lynn and members of the HR department jumping in And really this this has been so much more than just let's get the survey every year and see how we do. They have really made intentional moves, leadership moves uh to help our employees. Really that's the goal is to help our employees. So thank you. Thank you. Anybody have any I mean I think the three exemplary programs that you pointed out

045Henley uh Eel and transportation uh bravo to them and I think having Jamie Gilner over at transportation when we have had so much cha so many challenges with transportation I mean not necessarily management but she clearly has um taken hold of that department and I'm very impressed with that. Um what did she do or or what did any of these success stories do? I mean um a lot of praise I guess must have been Kevin. Um so Miss I'll I'll speak on behalf of Jamie. She's actually going to be here in July meeting as far as just a general transportation update. Um she took it seriously like she looked at the gallop data. I mean, she she's going to be more articulated about it, but it's it's an intentionality. Um, so pick her right. And

046also, I want to point out that she spent a lot of time with her Gallup coach. Uh, there it wasn't a one and done. We gave the survey and then as Dr. Hos requested, we set up um continuous check-ins, feedback loops uh twice a month at a minimum. Um and also she did not see it as let me raise the score. She had a conversation to really understand the data and um put that before her leadership team to really help them let them help her um analyze and understand the data and then make changes um intentional changes and shifts in her what she was doing every day. I mean, I have to say one of the things I thought when we had year one of the Gallup data was yikes. And um, you know, not

047only yikes, but yikes about, you know, showing it to the public. You know, like we could have sat back and said, "Oh, we need to work on these things." But we've always been quite open about this essentially a diagnostic. I have a question just about the survey design. we why is our response rate so low and how does that impact the outcome data? Our response rate actually was really good um based off of the number of respondents from last year when I did when I compared the raw numbers we were only about 200ish respondents less than we had last year. Gallup says the minimum threshold that they want to see um respondents at was about 75% and so we not only met that but we exceeded it and we maintained it um very closely this

048year. Okay. I think I must have misheard it before. That is a good response rate. Thank you. And and of course we can keep doing better. And I think one of the things we wanted to be sure we did this year when it was over was to thank everyone for doing it and also send out a brief note to the school system just thanking all of our employees for taking the time to do it and then give them some of the uh preliminary results so they can see things are moving. And I think that goes back to one of the the issues that we really tried to tackle from last year to this year was u my opinion seems to matter at work. And and I I think the key really and we've been hearing

049it for a long time um from public comment or from emails we get that people want to be heard and they want to know that they've been listened to. And um again at that supervisor level and I think that was one of Miss Gelner's key successes was setting up making it a structure in her department. Not a hit or miss, you know, let me tell me what you're thinking when I have time, but really setting up structures and putting them in place so that staff members could voice their concerns, share their ideas, and then see the the results from it. meaning um either yes, we can do something about that. So, we're going to work on it, work on it as a team, or no, we can't. Here's why. That's what people really, I think,

050see as as being heard. So, we had a nice jump in on we had a nice jump on that one as well, and I was proud of that because we worked on focusing on that as a school system. I'm also curious about the EL. Do you have any sense about what spurred the success there? I was not their Gallup collaborator. I'm going to invite Dan Random up for that. I think that's a really interesting question. Um, you can pull this up. Yeah, sorry. That's an interesting question. I don't know if it's easy to pinpoint one specific thing. Um I believe in their data much like the school division's data here they increased on virtually every indicator um I do know that there were some changes in terms of how the team was working together that

051I think made it more cohesive and improved communication in the department. Um, I have yet to debrief though uh with Miss McClan on the specifics of what she sees and her thinking about what changed. Any more questions? Well, thank you, Mr. Reading, and thank you, Miss Carter Shifflet. Make sure it gets your name right. Yes. Thank you all for your time. Thank you. Thank you, Sh. Well, with that, uh, we have a second closed meeting. Um, oh, sorry, this one, item A, is not I have it. Okay. I move that the school board of Almeral County, Virginia go into a closed meeting as authorized by the Freedom of Information Act section 2.2-3711A of the code of Virginia under subsection one for the discussion, consideration or interviews of prospective candidates for employment and the assignment, appointment,

052promotion, performance, demotion, salaries, disciplining or resignation of specific public officers, appointees or employees of any public body. The purpose of this item is to discuss whether the school board should adopt an increase in the compensation to be received by its members in the 2526 fiscal year and which method of adjusting such compensation shall be used in future years. Do we have a second? Second. Motion made by Miss Lee, seconded by Miss Osborne. We are now in close session. Dr. Of course we do. Uh, all those in favor uh say I I opposed. Thank you, Miss Thompson. Motion passes. We're not Good evening. Uh this meeting of the of June 12th meeting of the Al County School Board is back in session after a closed meeting. Do we have a motion? We do. Cherry Cuff. I

053move that the board certify by recorded vote that to the best of each board member's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion authorized the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting. Second motion. Motion made by Miss Lee, seconded by Mr. Page. Miss Thompson, can you please call the vote? Mr. Page, yes. Miss Lee, yes. Dr. Berlin. Yes. Miss Osborne. Yes. Miss Pri Miss Gillan is absent. Miss Prior, yes. Yes. With that, uh, do we have any motions coming out of the closed meeting? I have at least one. I move that we appoint students A, student A, student B, student C, student D, and student E as student reps and alternate for the 2526 school

054year. Do we have a second? I second. Motion made by Miss Lee, seconded by Dr. Berlin. Uh, I think we can all in favor of this. I opposed. Motion passes. And then I I do have another one. I move that we approve the the appointment for the 2526 school year of the list of school administrators that school board reviewed in close session. Second. Motion made by Miss Lee, seconded by Mr. Page. All in favor? I opposed. Motion passes. Uh with that, let us uh identify ourselves so anyone uh who's listening can listen uh knows who we are. Miss Schmidt, Roslin Schmidt, chief operating officer. Daffany Kaiser, assistant superintendent. Judy Lee Rabana District and Motion Hog. Graham Paige Miller District. Rebecca Berlin Whiteall district. Kday Jackwit District. Ellen Osborne, Scottville School District. Leslie Prior Rio District.

055Claire Kaiser, assistant superintendent for organizational development. Matthew Hall, superintendent. Josiah Black, school division council. Chandra Hayes, assistant superintendent of instruction. Christine Thompson, Clark. I don't know if the officers would like to identify themselves. Daryl Mish. Thank you. Kayen Per, thank you for being here tonight. Uh now let us stand for the pledge of allegiance of the repsible. And now a moment of silence. The next item is approval of the agenda. I move we approve tonight's agenda. Second. Motion made by Miss Osborne, seconded by Miss Lee. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion passes. Uh, next are announcements by school board or superintendent business. Miss Prior, do you have something? I do. Whereas Claire Kaiser joined Along County Public Schools on August 2nd, 2004 as an assistant principal at Henley Middle School, launching a career marked

056by integrity, innovation, impact. And whereas her leadership and commitment to student success led to her appointment as principal of Holly Elementary School on July 1st, 2007, where she cultivated a school culture grounded in equity, joy, and high expectations. And whereas Claire was promoted to director of educator quality and human resources on July 1st, 2012, where she designed and implemented divisionwide initiatives to elevate the teaching profession, recruit and retain outstanding educators and advance professional learning. And whereas on July 1st, 2018, Clare was appointed assistant superintendent of organizational human resources and professional development in division support where she oversaw critical human capital strategy, leadership development, and organizational change across the school division. And whereas Claire's leadership has been defined by a deep respect, a deep respect for people, a relentless pursuit of excellence, and a steady hand

057during times of uncertainty. And whereas she has mentored and inspired countless educators and leaders, always guided by the belief that school communities thrive when adults grow, connect, and lead with purpose. Now, therefore, we have resolved that the Alma County School Board hereby expresses its deep appreciation and admiration for Clare Kaiser's exceptional service, strategic leadership, and unwavering commitment to the students, families, and staff of Almont County Public Schools. And be it further resolved that the school board wishes clear a retirement filled with good health, enriching travels, vigorous games of pickle ball and chime with loved ones and witness whereof the Almont County School Board hereby adoption approves this resolution on June 12th, 2025. [Applause] Thank you. I don't know if you want to say anything about your sojouring here with ACBS. Speech speech. Speech. I just

058want to say that I am um humbled and honored and thank you for the very kind words and um it really has been a privilege to serve at the board and um I thank you for the opportunity. Thank you. You mind Dr. Aut Dr. AO? I just want to also on a personal note uh particularly uh the sixth whereas I would definitely count myself self in that among the people that Dr. Kaiser has mentored and inspired and really worked with over the years. Um I've certainly known and worked with many staff for as long as I've worked with Claire because but she and I both started here uh in Almar at the same time as school level administrators among a group of approximately maybe 15 others at that time 21 years ago and we're the

059only ones that are that are still here from that group. Um, I I have a professional bond with Claire that I think that few people get to experience in a career. And I'm sure that I benefited mostly from it much more than you did. And I'm full of gratitude to have uh had Claire in my life all these years, particularly the last many that we worked together in the central office. I'm going to miss her greatly and I'm just joining with everyone else and really thanking you for all you've done for the school system and for the kids. Thank you. Thank you again. [Applause] The next item on the agenda is spotlight on education. Uh Miss Thompson, do we have anything tonight? We had to cancel the spotlight. Okay. So, with that, we move on

060to public comment and Miss Osborne will read the rules. Um, we have no public comment for the regular public comment. Okay. So, we will wait to read the rules until we get to the section on public hearing. Public hearing. Okay. Thank you. Uh, the next item then on our agenda is approval of the consent agenda. Do we have a motion? I move that we uh approve the consent agenda. Second. Motion made by Mr. paid seconded by Miss Lee. All those in favor of approving the consent agenda say I. I. Opposed. Motion passes. Uh the next item is school board compensation. Uh and we have Mr. Reading from human resources to talk to us about this. All right. Good evening, schoolboard members and members of the cabinet. Um, I'm Dan Reading from human resources, and I'm

061here with you this evening to talk about schoolboard compensation. This connects to our strategic plan, specifically equitive and transformative resources. Typically, when I'm talking about compensation and focusing on this goal, we're talking about staff salaries. However, schoolboard compensation is also a part of that. We want members of the community to be attracted to this work and over time, the work of being a board member has changed significantly as our community has become more engaged. Expectations of responsiveness to constituent concerns and attendance at school and community events continue to rise. So, we want to be sure that schoolboard compensation matches the expectations of the community for the work that's being done. The basis of the determination of schoolboard salary is embedded both in schoolboard policy and in the Virginia Administrative Code. both provide a pathway towards

062how schoolboard compensation is determined and can be changed over time. Within the code of Virginia, there are two different methodologies. In one of them, in order to have an automatic salary increase, the school board, I'm sorry, an annual salary increase or the ability to increase regularly. The school board has to set a salary in line with the population of the community. Specifically, the county population has to fall within one of these buckets, and the school board may set a salary with the corresponding range. Note that the chair is eligible to receive an additional sum up to $1,800 recognizing the differentiated duties of the chair. The history over the past few years of schoolboard salary is listed on this slide. The current salary is $7,915 per year. That's paid out in bi-weekly installments of $3442. You

063can see that in 2022 when all staff received two uh increases, one midyear and one at the end of the or the beginning of the next fiscal year, the school board received a 10.2% increase. Prior to that, the board received an increase of 2.3% in 2019 and prior to that in 2017, a 2% increase. Both of those in line with the increase that the board adopted for employees in their budget. When we talk about compensation for our employees, we go back to our comparative market. Back in 2022, as part of our divisionwide compensation study, the board adopted 15 school divisions that we will compare ourselves to. Those 15 divisions were chosen based on the similarities of the population of that community in terms of educational attainment within that community. um proximity to major colleges and

064universities and uh in different communities, the diversity and size of the student population. We received responses from 13 of the 15 comparative divisions. Uh when we surveyed uh we did not get a response from either Augusta or Rockingham, but you can see the range of salaries for schoolboard members and we included the last known adjustment if they share that information with us. Uh we've also put the student population that that schoolboard serves. You can see it's a pretty wide range within that data. Uh, we note that Hanover County, their last change was in 2006. The board did attempt to increase salaries in 2023, but that attempt failed. Charlottesville City recently voted to increase schoolboard member salaries from the current 8,500 to be $10,000 effective January 1st. I'll just pause here if you want to take

065a look at this data. We can come back to that in a moment. So our market compensation philosophy that we adopted, we strive to provide compensation that is at the 60th percentile. When we rank those 15 divisions, highest to lowest, we want to be at the 60th percentile. Not at the not at the middle average, but above that. The average schoolboard salary for the 13 divisions that responded is $14,68 and the 60th percentile would be $15,600. I mentioned earlier there are two options that the board may use should they wish to adjust their compensation. Uh and per the different code sections, they can set a new salary and they must vote prior to July 1 annually if they wish to increase that salary effective July 1 of the next year. In option two, they can

066set that salary per that chart we showed earlier not to exceed 13,000 with the additional $1,800 for the chair and then enact annual adjustments that may not exceed 5% after a public hearing. Such a vote must take place between May 1st and June 30th during the year. That's a lot of information, but with that, uh, we're open for questions and discussion. Thanks for pulling that info, Dan. So, it looks like for both, um, options, there would need to still be an annual vote. There there would still need to be an annual vote. Yes. Well, ex if I may, um, if you if you select option two, you can adopt this year an automatic inflation increase for each successive year of up to 5%. Oh, I see. Doesn't have to be 5%. It could be 2%,

0674%, anything in between. Um but option one under which you can exceed the $13,000 cap if you want that would require a new vote each year. Okay. The other clarification that I wanted to make is that um under section 1414.3 um the board is allowed to also u pay an additional stipen to the vice chair of $1,200 if that's of interest. And finally, um Dr. Hayes uh alerted me as we came in this evening that Hanover actually just voted two days ago to double their salary. So next year their school board members will receive 17,400 and change. So the average is actually a little higher than what we show in our presentation. It's late breaking news. It came out after I had to submit the presentation. Sorry. Um Mr. black. Just to clarify, option two,

068uh, if we set it at that, we could peg it to the increases to what the staff gets provided. It did not exceed whatever percent 5%. Yes, sure. If you could So, that that could be we would if they got a 2%, we'd get a 2% up to five. Correct. As long as it's capped at 5%. Okay. And under option one, there's no potential for an additional stipen for the chair or vice chair. No, actually you can pay whatever additional statement you want to the chair and vice chair under option one. Okay. The financial this is money that comes directly from the school that the state doesn't give us any money for this. Is that true or I don't know the answer to that. I mean it's my understanding that this is all out of

069operational funding. Yeah. And I would just say that, you know, on a percentage of total budget basis, we're talking about a very very small percentage. Seven members times your current salaries is less than $100,000. I mean, I I'll just go ahead and start discussion. I feel like as someone who has served both as a member and as a vice chair and as the chair, I have always felt like it's so important to us to pay people for their work except us. And I think that I I can understand that, but I also think that it would be very hard for someone who didn't have the amount of privilege that I have to serve in a role like this. And I think that that really diminishes our power um to truly represent our constituents. So I

070am for whatever decision um I'm for being able to attract people who might not be able to put this time toward this if not for that reason. I would just say although no one does this job for the money, I certainly agree with Miss Lee that for some people there are some financial challenges to taking the time to participate. I think the comparative data is is pretty powerful and um and And I guess we will make a decision after we get public the public hearing. But do we have any more questions for Mr. Reading or any more comments? I guess I'm just I'm curious about members of the board if one or two are more attractive. I would lean toward two even though it's less money than the ceiling because we could craft it so

071it would be automatic with uh staff increases up to a ceiling of 5% and I would uh additional stipen for chair and we have a new chair in January and this wouldn't go into effect until January. Um I thought it was July one. I think it's January, isn't it? any any change that you adopt tonight cannot be effective until January 1st. Right. So it would be the it would be the next round. And I also I've served both as chair and vice chair and the vice chair gets almost nothing. I mean I think the the the payment for the vice chair who has to attend a lot of meet extra meetings also is um only if I am stricken ill does and the s and the the vice chair has to wield the gavl she

072gets an extra she gets $35. So, I think that's happened once and so I I would also uh want to increase that to reflect the amount of additional time. I I think a lot of members of the community think we just show up these twice a month and this is the tip of the iceberg of what we do. I don't have a strong opinion for either option one or option two, but it occurs to me that it might be worth it to deliberately think about this every year, which option one would force us to do. Yeah, that's would you go back to the comparison data just for just because that handover because that that handover was an outlier. They were the All right. And for anyone who is curious why we're doing it at this

073meeting under I and Mr. Black can correct me when if I veer off. uh these decisions have to be made between May and the end of June on a year where at least two members of the school board are running for election or there's two people running for school board seats. So it's not every year that this can be changed and this is the first one since we started talking about this two or three years ago where the stars aligned. Yes, that's correct. And one further nuance is that code just requires that you adopt a change under method one by an affirmative vote in an open meeting. Our schoolboard policy currently says that we'll also go through the exercise of having a public hearing, invite public commenters, do what we're doing now. We don't have

074to have the public hearings. We could decide to change schoolboard policy so that it can be done just by motion and vote. Are we finished with our conversation here? We can go straight to the public hearing. Miss, sounds good. Thank you, Mr. Daddy. Okay. I have public comment guidelines for this. We welcome public input at our schoolboard meetings. To sign up to speak during the public comment period, you can do so in several ways. Sign up online. Zup is available from 9:00 a.m. on the Monday of the meeting week until 2 pm on the meeting day. By phone, call the school board clerk's office to sign up. In person, you can sign up. The papers will be out there until the public comment period. Please note that public comment is not received at special board

075meetings unless specified on the agenda. Each speaker will have three minutes to speak. The maximum number of people or groups that may speak at a meeting is 20. Uh speaker should state your name, address voting district or voting district. We don't need to know both. Uh address comments to the school board, limit comments to schoolboard governance or school division operations, and provide written statements and supporting material to the clerk if you would like. And we'll be using a timer. Once the time is up, um you're done. Uh tonight we have two speakers, Mary McIntyre and Heidi Gilman Bennett. Is the giant timer? Oh, you know what? Because everything is out, you we just I'll just be just beating Mary. I'll be um I'm Mary McIntyre. I live in the Rio district. I'm a mother of

076two ACPS students and I'm the president of the Almoral Education Association. But tonight I'm speaking to you as an individual. Um, first I want to point out how wonderful it must be to get to decide your own compensation. Um, I have never had that privilege, but I think you you should have saved your discussion. [Laughter] We're good. Okay. Okay. I think you should have saved your discussion until after the public hearing because by having your discussion already, the message is that you don't really care what we have to say, whether you meant it that way or not. Um, and I feel conflicted about this issue because I know that in order to get more people um who have to work for a living, who aren't wealthy or retired to be able to run and serve

077in public office, it has to pay enough to make it worth their time. I logically know that. But that doesn't mean that there are not serious concerns both budgetary and morally with what you're considering tonight. While I of all people do not begrudge people the right to be paid fairly for their work, there was a decent amount of relevant information that could have been provided in the slides about this topic and it was not included. For example, how many hours do schoolboard members spend on schoolboard duties? How many school visits do schoolboard members normally complete? Do our board members respond to every email from people in their district? Do board members still get paid even when they miss board meetings? When we, the ACPS staff, come and beg you for raises, we have to justify

078why we deserve them, often explaining how many hours we work above and beyond what is expected, how many additional duties have been added to our workloads, etc. It would be really helpful for you all to justify the raise you're requesting to the taxpayers of Marl County and to your own employees, not simply comparing yourselves to what other people are getting paid. Now, I have no idea what amount or percent of a raise you plan to give yourselves tonight, but I want you to seriously think about how it will look and feel to your staff in a year where we face budget cuts so severe that FTEEs were cut, people lost their jobs, and beloved programs were ended because of costs. If you choose to raise your salaries to the maximum allowable, you will be giving

079yourselves approximately a 64% raise if my math is correct compared to my 3%. I'm not saying you don't deserve a reasonable raise, but this is not the year to give yourselves such a large raise. I believe you should consider giving yourselves a smaller, more modest raise and come back when our budget situation is dramatically different to raise your own salaries so dramatically. It will be more in line with the experience of your own hardworking employees and it will not put additional pressure on a budget that is already extremely tight. Um hello Heidi Gilman Bennett Samuel Miller district uh also chair of family council but tonight I'm speaking as a private citizen. Um, having spent many hours working to recruit school board candidates for many of your seats, I am actually in support of increased compensation.

080I would like to see Alamar County move toward a more professional school board that is actively working to achieve its goals. It takes significant time to do the job well. Not only to show up to these meetings, but also to actively prepare for the meetings, show up for the photo opportunities, but more importantly to meet with ACPS leaders and your counterpart counterparts on the board of supervisors, as well as respond to emails and calls and meet with opinionated members of the public like me. I'd like to see a board that reflects the diversity of our community. Committing to all the time required to do it well with so little pay is a real barrier. I've tried to recruit some amazing potential candidates who just couldn't make it work because of the pay involved and the

081need to pay bills and the need for health care. These are really strong considerations for members of our community. However, I must express concern that I've heard from other community members that raising compensation now during a budget crunch is a bad look. I also need to share community skepticism that increased salary may not actually produce better outcomes for currently seated board members. Um, we would like to see, we being members of the community, would like to see a school board that is more actively engaging with constituents and accountable to the public, such as town halls, the ability to sign up for emails when there's a school board agenda posted, accurate calendar of schoolboard advisory meetings, attachments on agendas that we can review and share ahead of time, those types of basic things. My personal preference

082is actually to put a larger salary increase into effect based on the number of hours actually required to do the work, but to have this take effect following a public vote when each of your seats are up for renewal. Um, my personal opinions. Um, but thank you for all that you do. I know it's a tough job. Thank you. and that we would comment on the issue of schoolboard compensation. Thank you, Miss Osborne. The next, excuse me, the next item on the agenda is uh item 8.3, employment engagement, and we have Miss Jay Carter Shifflin here tonight. Sorry. Good evening. Um, thank you schoolboard members, cabinet, superintendent halls. Um, tonight I will be sharing with you just a brief overview of Gallup engagement survey data. And as we think about our mission, vision, values, and

083goals, our strategic plan elaborates on what we aspire to achieve around equitable, transformative resources. This is elaborated in goal three. Um, and one of those resources is the Gallup engagement survey. Excuse me, can you just pull your mic down a little bit? Thank you. Thank you. How about now? Perfect. Okay. So, looking at focusing on goal three, the equitable transformative resources, the Gallup survey is the national norm tool. Um, and it provides the new division with valuable employee feedback through a rating scale that gives us results indicating levels of satisfaction in regards to national results. This helps the ACPS division recognize the experiences and work environment within departments and school buildings and how employees perceive their success with the systems, structures, and resources available to them. Then our state interview, a best practice that ACPS

084has successfully implemented for the past three years, allows staff members to expand on these survey results by offering deep insights into the frequency numbers from the rating scale. This is our fourth administration of Gallup engagement survey and it has allowed us to one provide our leaders with datadriven insight to inform their decisions. It has added to our division goal of creating a culture of listening and acknowledging our staff. And this resource supports our strategic plan and district goals. Later on in this presentation, I'm going to share a little bit in depth about intentional partnerships with a couple of our schools and departments. In those partnerships, we analyzed Gallup engagement data with the goal of improving school department engagement and climate, targeting support where it was needed most and aiming to reduce staff turnover. All of

085these efforts went towards the division's ultimate goal of enhancing student achievement. So, this is our Gallup um engagement survey dashboard for the entire division. For the pre for this school year, we had 2,229 respondents to the survey. ACPS is in the 39th percentile, which is a 3% increase from last year. The trended mean also increased by 02. Last year's trended mean was 3.83 and this year it is 3.92. The two highest items in for the division are Q2. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right. In Q5, my supervisor or someone at work seems to care about me as a person. Gallup also identified a couple areas of opportunity for growth. Q4, in the last seven days, I've received recognition and praise for doing good work. In Q6, there is

086someone at work who encourages my development. I want to point out there are a few celebrations around ACPS's engagement index. When we look at the percentage of our engaged employees, it increased by 4%. It went from 38% the previous year to 42% this last year. The number the percentage of our employees not engaged decreased by 2%. It went from um 49% down to 47%. And our actively disengaged also decreased 2% going from 13% to 11%. Gallup shares that when organizations reach the 4:1 ratio, meaning there are four engaged employees for every one actively disengaged employee. This is the tipping point where engaged employees can offset the negative impact of disengaged employees. The ACPS engagement ratio has increased from 2.92:1 to 3.82:1. So again, as we can see the increase in overall engagement and and the

087overall engagement mean over the course of four years. The ACPS engagement ratio increased by 0.9 last year, which is our biggest increase. By the way, I want to point that out. Our Gallup collaborator wanted to point out with meaningful change being at 0.1, we're so close that he um acknowledges the 0.9 as meaningful change. Overall, there has been an increase of 0.19 since the beginning of implementation four years ago, and there has been a shift in the right direction each year since. Again, Gallup is ACPS's nationally normed survey tool used to indicate levels of engagement of our staff. In comparison to other education organizations participating in the Gallup database, ACPS is ranked at the 48th percentile range. And compared to others who are also in their fourth year of administration, ACPS is ranked at the

08833rd percentile range. A few items to notice. First, there was an increase in each of the Q12 items. The bolded mean represents significant change for the organization. That bolded mean is in the second to last column in the chart. The overall satisfaction of respondents in this year's administration increased by.16. Our Gallup representative explains that this Q item usually relates to pay, commute, and logistical topics. The next two rows highlighted in yellow represent ACPS's two highest items with significant change in the mean. That is Q8, the mission and purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important. And Q3, at work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best. Lastly, even with all the positive increases, this data presents ACPS with a couple opportunities for growth. Those roles are highlighted in baby

089blue. Q6, there's someone at work who encourages my development. and Q4. In the past in the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work. These three additional items are questions that ACPS attached to our engagement survey. The NA for percentile rank indicates that there are not enough other organizations to compare that item to. Each of the three additional items as you can see show significant increase in mean from the previous administration of the survey. Lastly, as requested by our superintendent, we had a few intentional partnerships with um the goal of collaborating on Gallup engagement. Myself, Dr. Sarah Lynn, Jason Sears, Dan Reading, Jennifer Weller Kim, and Dave Bruce worked with the six identified schools and departments regularly to discuss their Gallup data and plans to increase engagement and climate. I

090want to take a moment to highlight a few partnerships that show tremendous growth, keeping in mind that Gallup says 2 is the most significant. According to um Gallup, that change of 0.2 two or more between survey periods represents a meaningful change for our organization. Our departments that have 100 or less respondents that was transportation we can see they made more than um meaningful growth. Henley Middle School and our international and e programs and thank you so much for allowing me to share this update with you all. Thank you for your time. I would love to open up for any questions or feedback that you would have at this moment. I'm just curious about next steps or or steps that have already happened um about how things are being shared with individual schools and individual departments

091and then what they would put into place uh as a followup. Yes, we've had the pleasure of collaborating with um Pat Mclofflin and the Department of Strategic Plan to set up folders that allowed all of our um managers to see their data right away. We didn't hold that. So, they were given access as well as Superintendent Hos um as soon as the survey ended. From there, we've also been collaborating around their school strategic plan and department strategic plans to make sure that they were supported with with their Gallup engagement goal. Um lastly, the collaboration with each indivi individual department or school leader um was given that opportunity. They're working on 90-day action plans right now and that goal is being um that's the language was put in there as part of that and strategies um

092have been we're helping them with strategies to meet those goals. Also the division has um has created the opportunity for Dr. Sarah Lennon, myself to go to receive strengths, Gallup's Clifton strengths training that we also will come back and implement uh with our leaders in the division as well as professional learning and development around that to support with uh increasing our engagement goals and ultimately the student achievement goal. And and this was a key focus of our leadership retreat. We uh on the first day of the retreat, we had our representative come from Gallup to give a overall presentation that was pretty similar to what Shay just shared. He he kind of uh he presented from the view of the overall district and then at the same time they were uh analyzing their data from

093their school. He walked us through a prof some pretty good professional development around how to look at the divisionwide data and then have discussions at the table with with the people we were at the table. Identify an area we wanted to work on. talk about the causes of it and then come up with a simple plan to do that. So we know that 70% of the way a person responds is in direct relationship to their manager the person that supervises them directly. And so we know that for us to be able to shift keep shifting not really shifting the data but shifting employee engagement so they feel good about coming to work and feel good about their day-to-day experiences which then translate into a great experience for kids and families is to work with the

094direct supervisors. So we will do the same plan this year where we look for uh hot spots in the school system um schools and departments where they seem to be standing still or maybe have gone uh maybe backtracked a little bit or aren't um aren't as high as we'd like them to be and we'll provide that kind of assistance because it really was effective and a lot of it was effective because of Shay Carter Shifflet and Sarah Lynn and members of the HR department jumping in And really this this has been so much more than just let's get the survey every year and see how we do. They have really made intentional moves, leadership moves uh to help our employees. Really that's the goal is to help our employees. So thank you. Thank you. Anybody

095have any I mean I think the three exemplary programs that you pointed out Henley uh Eel and transportation uh bravo to them and I think having Jamie Gellner over at transportation when we have had so much cha so many challenges with transportation I mean not necessarily management but she clearly has um taken hold of that department and I'm very impressed with that. Um what did she do or or what did any of these success stories do? I mean um a lot of praise I guess must have been given out. Um so Miss I'll I'll speak on behalf of Jamie. She's actually going to be here in July meeting as far as just a general transportation update. Um she took it seriously like she looked at the gallop data. I mean, she she's going to be

096more articulated about it, but it's it's an intentionality. Um, so pick her right. And also, I want to point out that she spent a lot of time with her Gallup coach. Uh, there it wasn't a one and done. We gave the survey and then as Dr. Hos requested, we set up um continuous check-ins, feedback loops uh twice a month at a minimum. Um and also she did not see it as let me raise the score. She had a conversation to really understand the data and um put that before her leadership team to really help them let them help her um analyze and understand the data and then make changes um intentional changes and shifts in her what she was doing every day. I mean I have to say one of the things I thought when

097we had year one of the Gallup data was yikes and um you know not only yikes but yikes about you know showing it to the public you know like we could have sat back and said oh we need to work on these things but we've always been quite open about this essentially a diagnostic I have a question just about the survey design we why is our response rate so low and how does that impact the outcome data. Our response rate actually was really good um based off of the number of respondents from last year. When I did when I compared the raw numbers, we were only about 200ish respondents less than we had last year. Gallup says the minimum threshold that they want to see um respondents at was about 75%. And so we not

098only met that but we exceeded it and we maintained it um very closely this year. Okay. I think I must have misheard it before. That is a good response rate. Thank you. And and of course we can keep doing better. And I think one of the things we wanted to be sure we did this year when it was over was to thank everyone for doing it and also send out a brief note to the school system just thanking all of our employees for taking time to do it and then give them some of the uh preliminary results so they can see things are moving. And I think that goes back to one of the the issues that we really tried to tackle from last year to this year was u my opinion seems to matter

099at work. And and I I think the key really and we've been hearing it for a long time um from public comment or from emails we get that people want to be heard and they want to know that they've been listened to and um again at that supervisor level and I think that was one of Miss Gelner's key successes was setting up making it a structure in her department not a hit or miss you know let me tell me what you're thinking when I have time but really setting up structures and putting them in place so that staff members could voice their concerns, share their ideas, and then see the the results from it. Meaning, um, either yes, we can do something about that, so we're going to work on it, work on it as

100a team, or no, we can't. Here's why. That's what people really, I think, see as as being heard. So, we had a nice jump in on we had a nice jump on that one as well and I was proud of that because we worked on focusing on that as a school system. I'm also curious about the EL. Do you have any sense about what spurred the success there? I was not their Gallup collaborator. I'm going to invite Dan Random up for that. I think that's a really interesting question. Um, it's You can pull this up. Yeah. Sorry. That's an interesting question. I don't know if it's easy to pinpoint one specific thing. Um, I believe in their data, much like the school division's data here, they increased on virtually every indicator. Um, I do know

101that there were some changes in terms of how the team was working together that I think made it more cohesive and improved communication in the department. Um, I have yet to debrief though uh with Miss McClan on the specifics of what she sees and her thinking about what changed. Any more questions? Well, thank you Mr. reading. And thank you, Miss Carter Shifflet. Make sure it gets your name right. Yes. Thank you all for your time. Thank you. Thank you, Sh. Well, with that, uh, we have a second closed meeting. Um, oh, sorry, this one. Item A is not I have it. I move that the school board of Almeral County, Virginia go into a closed meeting as authorized by the Freedom of Information Act, section 2.2-3711A 2-3711A of the code of Virginia under subsection one

102for the discussion, consideration or interviews of prospective candidates for employment and the assignment, appointment, promotion, performance, demotion, salaries, disciplining or resignation of specific public officers, appointees or employees of any public body. The purpose of this item is to discuss whether the school board should adopt an increase in the compensation to be received by its members in the 2526 fiscal year and which method of adjusting such compensation shall be used in future years. Do we have a second? Second. Motion made by Miss Lee, seconded by Miss Osborne. We are now in close session. Dr. Of course we do. Uh all those in favor uh say I. I. I. Opposed. Thank you, Miss Thompson. Motion passes. We're now change it. Yeah, it's the same as the last. The school board is back in session. Do we have

103a motion coming out of closed meeting? Do Chair Auff, I move that the board certify by recorded vote that to the best of each board member's knowledge only public business lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion authorized authorized in the closed meeting that were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting. Second. Motion made by Miss Lee, seconded by Mr. Graham. Miss Thompson, will you call the vote? Miss Spillman is absent. Dr. Berlin, yes. Miss Lee, yes. Miss Osborne, yes. Mr. Paige, yes. Miss Prior, yes. Chair AOP. Yes. Is there another motion? Yes, Chair. I move to increase schoolboard compensation in line with our Alberar County 60th percentile market basket. Um that will bring compensation to $16,24920. Um included in that motion is

104the increase of the chair stipen to 2,000 and the vice chair stipen to 1,000. Do we have a second? Second. Motion made by Dr. Berlin, seconded by Miss Lee. Do we have a Shall we do a a roll call vote? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Chair, um the vice chairside, I didn't quite catch that. Oh, apologies. Uh clerk, uh 2,000 for the chair and 1,000 for the vice chair. Thank you, Miss Osborne. Yes, Miss Prior. No. Miss Splman is absent. Miss Lee, yes. Dr. Berlin, yes. Mr. Page, yes. Chair Auff, yes. With a vote, five one zero. Motion carries. Thank you, Miss Johnson. You're welcome. Pardon? Discussions. I mean the vote is already taken but um I I do want to note that a a lot of the work that we do I mean it's here

105obviously but a lot of the consideration that we do um in the past many of us have considered life and death issues um we're considering enormous issues for our community uh And a lot of that happens when we're not here. So I feel like the amount of work that we do going to schools, going to committee meetings, considering um what is best for our community is something that is worthwhile and worth compensating. So I'm glad we did this. Thank you. I I earned in not having a discussion before we took the vote. But I think um I think there isn't we probably don't do a good enough job in informing the public of how many hours this job takes to do it well. Um many many meetings uh many many nighttime meetings. Uh there are

106many school visits, visits with community members. Uh we all have committee assignments as well. Um, and I think everyone on this board takes this job seriously. And um, together I think all seven of our salaries would put us at about the same rate as one FTE, right? I think that's of course my math is not all that great. Okay, with that uh we have adopted the new salary. Um and is there any further business on we do have a couple really important resolutions that uh Dr. Kaiser would like to read for the board? Yes. Um good evening to chair a vice chair Berlin and school board members. Um, tonight we have the honor of recognizing two significant proclamations that reflect Alamar County Public Schools commitment to equity, inclusion, and the celebration of our diverse community.

107These recognitions not only align with our values, but also uplift the voices, history, and contributions of individuals and groups who have shaped and continue to enrich our schools and broader community. Um I will begin by sharing our proclamation in celebration of LGBTQ plus pride month. Um followed by our recognition of Junth and several meaningful uh community events connected to this important holiday. Um whereas lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer pride month or LGBTQ plus pride month is celebrated annually in June to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall uprising, a catalyst for the LGBTQ plus rights movement and continues to promote equal justice and opportunity for LGBTQ plus Americans. And whereas the Virginia Values Act signed into law on April 11th, 2020 made Virginia the first southern state to enact comprehensive non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ plus individuals and

108employment, housing, public accommodations, and access to credit. And whereas Alamar County's mission is to enhance the well-being, quality of life for all citizens by providing highquality public services and responsible stewardship of public resources. And whereas Albamar County Public Schools affirms its mission, working together as a team, we will end the predictive value of race, class, gender, and special capacities for our children's success through highquality teaching and learning for all. We seek to build relationships with families and communities to ensure that every student succeeds and we will know every student. ACPS's core values include equity, excellence, family and community and wellness um that guide uh this mission. And whereas ACPS is committed to fostering an inclusive, affirming and equitable school environment that allows all students and community members, including LGBTQ plus individuals, to thrive and be

109celebrated. And whereas LGBTQ plus individuals have enriched every dimension of American society, including government, education, science, the arts, business, public safety, the military, and more, and their continued contributions strengthen our local and national communities. Now therefore be it proclaim that we Alamar County Public Schools reaffirm our commitment to equity, belonging and excellence for every student and staff member and proudly recognize the cultural richness, resilience and contributions of the LGBTQ plus community to the vibrancy and success of our county. Um and signed this 12th day of June 2025. And then just a reminder for our students that are listening who may feel um as though they have no one to talk to or that they have no one to turn to. Um there is support um through the Trevor Project wre.org [Music] a national crisis and

110suicide prevention resource for LGBTQ plus youth. um offering text, chat, and call services. And then our proclamation recognizing Junth. Um whereas Alamar County Public Schools affirmed the fundamental belief that all people are created equal, endowed with an inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And whereas on June 19th, 1865, more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, enslaved African-Americans in Galveston, Texas, were informed of their freedom, marking the effective end of slavery in the United States. And whereas black Americans have commemorated this date as Junth, a celebration of emancipation and resilience, which is now recognized nationally and by the Commonwealth of Virginia as a day of remembrance and celebration. And whereas ACPS honors the enduring legacy and cultural significance of Junth by uplifting the stories and perseverance, progress

111and community shaped by generations of black Americans. And whereas Alamar County schools recommmit to the ongoing pursuit of racial equity and justice, acknowledging the vital role of educators, activists, civic leaders, and community members who have worked to advance freedom and dignity for all. Now, therefore, be it proclaim that we, Alamoir County Public Schools, recognize June 19th, 2025 as Junth, and we celebrate the historic triumph of black Americans in claiming their freedom while committing to a just and inclusive future for every member of our school community this 12th day of June, 2025. And just a couple of community celebrations to make um the board aware of. Um this evening the Brooks family YMCA had a Junth celebration. Um and as a valued community partner and current early middle school um school champion, uh the Brooks family

112YMCA um hosted their Junth celebration. It was from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m. this evening. um at the McIntyre Park facility and this was a free event to the Albamar Schultzville community members. It included guest speakers, performances, um they had a bounce house, catering. Um it was a great celebration. Um, and this celebration is an opportunity for families to come together in the spirit of freedom, families, and friends, and reflects the YMCA's ongoing commitment to community inclusion and youth engagement. And then the 100 Black Men of Central Virginia um and the MCubed um summer uh academy events um start up next week. um the 100 Black Men of Central Virginia. Um their organization's purpose is to improve the quality of life within the community and advocate for eliminating the achievement gap of African-American male students through

113mentoring by its members. Um the organization will host 50 scholars um from Alamar County and Charlottesville City Schools for the upcoming 2025 MQ Summer Academy. Um, and the programming um will be Monday, June 16th through Friday, June 27th from 8:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. um at Journey Middle School. And the MCQ Summer Academy is an algebra readiness program that supports the group's mission to eliminate the achievement gap of African-American males um in grades K through 12. Um, the 100 Black Men of Central Virginia invite the board members and their families to join our scholars and their families for the annual Junth Freedom Day and MQ community cookout. And that's scheduled on Thursday, June 19th from 3 to 5:00 p.m. at Darttown Park. And then in addition, we would be honored to have um schoolboard members

114attend the culminating celebration of achievement ceremony on Friday, June 27th um from 12:30 p.m. till 3:30 p.m. um at the Double Tree Hotel on Hilton Heights Road. Um, these events celebrate excellence, build community, and honor the scholars commitment to academic success and alignment with the 100 Black Men of Central Virginia's mission. Um, these proclamations are made um even more meaningful by the strong partnerships we maintain with organizations like the Brooks Family YMCA and the 100 Black Men of Central Virginia. And I encourage our um board members, staff, and families to join these community-led events and show our shared commitment to equity, inclusion, and student achievement. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Kaiser. A lot of important stuff that you brought to us. Anyone else have any Just one point of clarification. Um the lunchon, is it

115the omni or the double tree? Well, double tree. Double tree. Thank you. I heard one and wrote down the other. Okay. Um, and then just the other thing I just have to say how proud I am to serve on a school board that continues to respect, support, appreciate the diversity of all students. Um, and think about all of the the challenges that they are facing all the time, but particularly right now in our country. So, I have to say I'm very proud. Thank you for doing that. And thank you for all the support that you and all the members of the um the leadership team and the school um leaders and teachers and pair professionals and bus drivers and everyone included um provide to our students. It it is truly needed and it's so important.

116Yes. Here here. Anything else? There being no business no further business, this meeting is adjourned. Tread.